Cellular wireless networks are widely popular in people life. In cellular wireless networks, base stations (BSs) communicate with terminals (e.g., User Equipments (UEs), or mobile devices or mobile stations) within range of the BSs.
The geographical areas covered by the service of base stations are generally referred to as cells. Cellular wireless networks are formed by a plurality of BSs to cover a wide geographical area, and usually, cells are desired to be seamlessly with adjacent and/or overlapping cells. Terminals are generally mobile and may move among cells, prompting a need for traffic mobility between adjacent and/or overlapping cells.
3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project)/WLAN (Wireless Local Area Networks) interworking intended to provide UEs with seamless mobility between 3GPP access network and WLAN access network. Traffic steering (i.e., handling the traffic routing among cells) is a key issue of seamless traffic mobility. In 3GPP/WLAN interworking, radio resource utilization and load balance are important requirements.
Thus, the application provides a traffic steering method and a heterogeneous radio access network system applying the same.